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"Good;" and then they bent themselves to the oars with every nerve on the quiver, and their eyes on the shore. "Stop! Back-water!" Obediently they stopped the way of the boat and backed her, wondering what had gone wrong. A turn of the wheel sent them in among the canoes. There was a flash of steel, a plunge of the strong arm down into the boats, accompanied by a ripping noise.
It was upon this very night that Falding the Englishman sat with other men in a London tavern, talking joyously. "There's been the luck of Heaven," he said, "in the whole exploit. We'd been prospecting for months. As a sort of try in a back-water we rowed over one night to an island and pitched tents.
McClernand moved his right still nearer to the river, Oglesby's brigade reaching nearly to the extreme left of the Confederate works, and to the head of the back-water up the valley of the small brooks above Dover; the Eighth, Eighteenth, and Twenty-ninth Illinois were respectively posted across the three roads, which, leaving the main road along the ridge, called Wynn's Ferry road, crossed the hollow and through the enemy's intrenchments into Dover.
I was at least thirty yards lower down than when I entered the stream, and the water was rushing and foaming all round me; another stagger nearly carried me off my feet, and, in the exertion to keep them, a thick transpiration rose upon my forehead, my ears began to sing, and my head to swim, while, disordered in their balance, the buck and the guns almost strangled me, I looked down the channel; the water was running in a white, broken rapid into the black pool below, and swept with a wide, foaming back-water under the steep rock which turned its force.
The truth is that one-half of the American mind, that not occupied intensely in practical affairs, has remained, I will not say high-and-dry, but slightly becalmed; it has floated gently in the back-water, while, alongside, in invention and industry and social organisation, the other half of the mind was leaping down a sort of Niagara Rapids.
The seas, therefore, which struck us to starboard were much broken, by the vessel's side, only reaching us in fragments as we lay flat on our faces; while those which came from larboard being what are called back-water seas, and obtaining little hold upon us on account of our posture, had not sufficient force to drag us from our fastenings.
The fort, as it stood in 1861, embraced about one hundred acres of land. On the east it fronted the Cumberland; to the north it faced Hickman's creek, a small stream which at that time was deep and wide because of the back-water from the river; on the south was another small stream, or rather a ravine, opening into the Cumberland. This also was filled with back-water from the river.
The clock did not tick twice before there came a reaction. It seemed so impossible that they should be independent of each other. He would not be himself without Nina! and the flow of his affection, like the back-water of a mill-stream, returned only the stronger for its momentary interruption. After all, Nina was everything, Nina was the first consideration. Something must be done at once.
His right extended to the back-water up the ravine opening into the Cumberland south of the village. The troops were not intrenched, but the nature of the ground was such that they were just as well protected from the fire of the enemy as if rifle-pits had been thrown up. Our line was generally along the crest of ridges. The artillery was protected by being sunk in the ground.
Eight additional guns were in the fort. Colonel Gilmer, going from Fort Henry to Fort Donelson, immediately began the tracing and construction of works for infantry defence. The river protected the east face of the position, and the valley of Hickman Creek, filled with back-water from the river, sufficiently guarded the north.
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